The oil and gas industry recognizes the importance of assessing the oil spill risks associated with its operations and implement measures to manage their risks. Consequences of oil spills are highly dependent of the nature of the release, the amount spilled, the duration, where it occurred and how it is subsequently managed. The new European Directive on Offshore Safety (2013/30/EU) necessitates operators to demonstrate their provision to cover liabilities from potential major accidents, and oil spill financial responsibilities are also manifested in USA's regulations.
This paper will describe a framework for using probabilistic oil spill modelling in order to predict the economic magnitudes of oil spills, and hence address the requirements of the new EU directive. It will demonstrate how social and environmental consequences are encompassed and how mitigating measures will affect the predicted outcomes. The framework allows operators to see the expected outcomes from a variety of scenarios with different combinations of variables, including spill rates, weather conditions, and clean-up efforts. By estimating risk in monetary terms, comparison could also be made between assets and geographical regions.
The proposed approach can also be used as a decision making tool. An increasing amount of decisions are based on cost-benefit analyses (CBA) and operators often need to demonstrate that their solutions can be considered ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable). This entails comparing the risk-reducing measures with the estimated mitigation effect achieved. A methodological approach that quantifies risk level changes can enable decision makers to make better and more informed decisions by allowing them to choose the optimal risk-reducing measures.
